Casey Tonkin

A lifelong technophile and science fiction geek, Casey joined Information Age in 2019. With interests in AI, space travel, and post-humanism, Casey is always on the hunt for the overlap of science-fact and science-fiction.

Binance
Cryptocurrency

US regulators launch legal action against crypto giant Binance alleging they broke US money laundering laws

- March 28, 2023 2 MIN READ

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has launched a suit against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, claiming the company was deliberately skirting local regulation and knowingly facilitated the illicit flow of money. In a complaint against Binance, its founder Changpeng Zhao, and chief compliance officer Samuel Lim, the CFTC alleged the Binance team… Read more »

facebook
Social Media

Facebook’s fight with Australian privacy regulators over the Cambridge Analytica scandal has hit the High Court

- March 10, 2023 2 MIN READ

The battle between Facebook and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) had a hearing in the High Court this week over the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personal data of 300,000 Australians was harvested without their consent. Facebook has been fighting a court battle for three years following revelations that between… Read more »

big tech layoff
People

Big tech layoffs free up talent for Australia

- February 3, 2023 3 MIN READ

Sudden mass layoffs at the biggest technology companies on Earth could be an opportunity for Australian organisations to fill long-standing gaps in their workforces. More than 70,000 employees have been sacked from tech giants in the past year as companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta – which saw enormous growth during the pandemic – are now winding back their staffing… Read more »

Max Headroom
AI/Machine Learning

Microsoft has built a new AI-based speech generator that can mimic how you talk after hearing it for just 3 seconds

- January 12, 2023 2 MIN READ

A newly developed text-to-speech language model from Microsoft can mimic a person’s speech from as little as three seconds of sample audio – but the tech giant is keeping its tech under wraps for now so it is not misused. One of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) research teams published a paper about its model for text-to-speech… Read more »

FTX Sam Bankman-Fried
Cryptocurrency

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas

- December 14, 2022 2 MIN READ

Police in the Bahamas have arrested the founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX after criminal charges were filed in the US. Sam Bankman-Fried, who goes by the name SBF, was head of the company that was valued at $47 billion before speculation FTX was running insolvent led to a liquidity crunch that ultimately brought down the exchange… Read more »

Fintech

Payments startup Xiippy named the best in Queensland tech

- November 3, 2022 2 MIN READ

Privacy-focused payment startup Xiippy was the big winner from the River Rival pitch competition that closed out Brisbane’s Something Tech conference last week, taking out both the judge’s award for Best in Product and tying for the Best of the Best award with diabetes medicine subscription service Stripped Supply. Xiipy is encouraging retail merchants to… Read more »

Politics

Web developers are among 10 IT roles added to the federal government’s national skills shortage list

- October 7, 2022 2 MIN READ

The National Skills Commission has added 10 more IT-related occupations to its list of skills facing national shortages, once again highlighting the need to train more technology talent in Australia. Web developers, database admins, and business analysts are now among jobs on the Commission’s official skills shortage list which informs Australia’s migration and skills development policies.… Read more »

Cryptocurrency

Crypto.com accidentally sent a customer $10.5m, and by the time they noticed, she’d bought a house in Melbourne

- September 1, 2022 2 MIN READ

Major cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com accidentally sent a woman $10.5 million instead of the $100 refund she requested – and didn’t notice until seven months later. Now the platform is trying to recover its money, $1.35 million of which the woman, Thevamanogari Manivel, used to buy her sister a home in the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn. The… Read more »

Other tech

Bunnings and Kmart drop facial recognition as privacy commissioner takes a closer look

- July 28, 2022 3 MIN READ

Kmart and Bunnings have temporarily halted their use of facial recognition in stores pending an investigation from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). It was last month revealed that Wesfarmers-owned Kmart and Bunnings, and whitegoods retailer the Good Guys, quietly began using facial recognition in some stores without express consent from their customers. While… Read more »

Workplace

The big bucks in tech come from working remotely

- July 15, 2022 3 MIN READ

Remote tech workers are paid nearly twice as much as their full-time office counterparts, a global survey from Landing.Jobs has found. Technology professionals in every region reported higher salaries if they were fully remote or had flexible working arrangements compared with people working full office jobs, according to the Global Tech Talent Trends 2022 survey. On average,… Read more »